As of today, in order to find out more about our ancient culture, all you have to do is visit the civic museums of Villa Mirabello and take a tour through the eleven rooms of the new Prehistory and Protohistory sections. A magnificent journey through prehistory, featuring unique finds like the evidence of human settlements at our lake, in Pizzo di Bodio, dating as far back as 6220 BC, during the Mesolithic period.
It's no wonder that Isolino Virginia (home to another archaeological museum), Bodio and Punta Sabbioni are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, as are the Lombard towns of Castelseprio and Torba. With its late Roman structures, during the middle ages Castelseprio became the capital of the County of Seprio, which at the time encompassed a large portion of the province of Varese.
Significant finds have also been made in Besano, whose museum, which opened in 1981, houses Besanosaurus and Saltriosaurus fossils, the former an ichthyosaur and the latter a carnivorous dinosaur about eight metres long. And don't miss out on the Studi Patri Museum in Gallarate, with its magnificent medieval monastery, and the Archaeological Museum in Sesto Calende, which houses various artefacts of the Golasecca culture that flourished in western Lombardy, eastern Piedmont and the Ticino region from the ninth to the fifth centuries B.C.
In 2002, in the town of Caravate, a bulldozer unearthed the remains of a skeleton during the restoration of the church of Sant'Agostino, part of a necropolis. A score of skeletons dating to the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. were recovered soon after, reflecting the extent to which the Varese area was inhabited in ancient times.